CPU question

Hi there,
First post for me, though, I've been trolling the forum to help with my first notebook purchase decision. There is one question I have really seen discussed , which would help me tremendously. I've settled on the 5790(m570ru) and have configured it with the C2D 2.2 rather than the C2D 2.4 because of the large price disparity. I was told the 2.2 ghz (really 4.4 b/c its duo) is more than enough to handle any applications currently out. I game once in a while, but play Oblivion, which is an enormous system hogs. With regard to gaming, I was told that the CPU isn't really a problem (at 2.2 C2D) but rather it's the gpu that's the bottle neck.
My question is this: I know there would be differences in 3dmark and pcmark benchmarks but what would the real yield be to gaming with the 2.4 vs. the 2.2? Is that gain justified the price difference? Also, anybody have an idea how GRAW and Oblivion would perform on the M570ru?

 

The general consensus is that the 200 MHz leap from T7300 to T7500 and T7500 to T7700 isn't worth the extra cost, as a matter of fact, more people prefer the T7300 with its 2.0 GHz as the "sweet spot" for the CPU, as it features the same L2 cache as the higher model processors and is a bigger improvement over the 1.8 GHz T7100 due to the cache increase. However, since you chose a T7500, I doubt that the extra 200 MHz will be worth it in real life applicable situations, though in synthetic benchmarks, I'm sure you'll see an increase of a few points. Remember, though, synthetics are very superficial and it's doubtful that you may notice the difference, which is what really matters in real computing situations.

 

Both GRAW and Oblivion would perform very well and smoothly on the M570ru with the T7300 processor. For gaming, there's no need to go any higher than the 2.0GHz w/4mb L2 Cache.

 

the only time you will see the benefit is cpu intensive applications. the only time it would really matter would be a long running cpu intensive application.

those include encoding movies and music into various formats, photo and video editing, possibly complex computational modeling for physics and engineering applications.

even then- the performance difference probably won't justify the price difference. if the processor costs twice as much and is 10% faster at some app, you just know it isn't worth it.

agreed that synthetics are pointless. don't buy a better processor to get a better 3dmark score.

in games, its not going to change your frame rate- especially not in a statistically significant way.

 

This coming from the guy with a T7700

Sorry, couldn't resist! Gotta love the uncustomizable MBP

 

you have the wrong interpretation of dual core it does not mean 4.4Ghz it is not 2 seperate procs euther it means 2 prossecing cores at 2.2GHz not combined for 4.4GHz as one can rest while the other processes or during multi threaded apps they work together

 

hc1 is right - that's incorrect. You don't double the clockspeed. A dual-core processor is just that - two cores on one chip. Each runs at, in this case, 2.2GHz. Any given application is going to run like it would on a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor. For applications that make use of both cores like Photoshop, you'll see on average a 1.8x speedup or so.

Try doing some searching on this topic to further understand it.

And don't pay for the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo. As a matter of fact, I think you should go with the 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo.

 

I looked up multi-core computing in wikipedia and it says that there are many factors that contribute or detract from the two cores being able to process in what i had thought was a simple linear fashion i.e. 1+1=2. In Wiki, it says "For example, most current (as of 2006) video games will run faster on a 3 GHz single-core processor than on a 2GHz dual-core processor (of the same core architecture), despite the dual-core theoretically having more processing power, because they are incapable of efficiently using more than one core at a time." If that is the case, should I go after the best c2d b/c it may have to work solo? (I've phrased that badly, but you probably know what i mean.) What is the reasoning behind chosing a 2 c2d?

 

because since they are available, more and more coders will optimize their software to take advantage of the dual-core. Old programs will not benefit, but newer ones will.

 

Correction: Poorly coded old programs will not benefit, or didn't need the extra power in the first place. It really isn't hard to code to an arbitrary number of threads. There are certain places in CPU-intensive world simulation code where it is nearly trivial.